“I wouldn't be too nasty, if I were you,” said Frederic, a note of triumph in his voice. “Yvonne gave it to me. I made her promise to say nothing to you about it. She———”
“Yvonne? Are you——— Impossible! She could not have had———”
“It was lying under the marble top of that old bureau in her bedroom. She found it there when the men came to take it away to storage. It hadn't been moved in twenty years or more.”
“In—her—bedroom?” murmured Brood, passing his hand over his eyes. “The old bureau—marble top—good Lord! It was our bedroom. Let me see it—give it to me this instant!”
“I can't do that. It's mine now. It's safe where it is.”
“Yvonne found it? Yvonne? And gave it to you? What damnable trick of fate is this? But——— Ah, it may not be a portrait of your—your mother. Some old photograph that got stuck under the———”
“No; it is my mother. Yvonne saw the resemblance at once and brought it to me. And it may interest you to know that she advised me to treasure it all my life, because it would always tell me how lovely and sweet my mother was—the mother I have never seen.”
“I insist on seeing that picture,” said Brood with deadly intensity.
“No,” said Frederic, folding his arms tightly across his breast. “You didn't deserve her then and you———”
“You don't know what you are saying, boy!”